Interested in the critique of the idea/book as being almost anti-feminist in that it seems to imply the problem is working mothers? Lots to chew on here.
4 Likes
Julien’s quote about this hits a different pressure point, I think, which is lifestyle inflation/American Dream stuff…
“The premise of the book is that a considerable amount of middle-income households are going broke because they build unsustainable lifestyles that require them to earn two incomes. And not just that, they’ve build this lifestyle that requires them to earn two incomes at the same or higher level for the foreseeable future.”
So when inevitably, you hit an earnings ceiling, this precarious lifestyle falls apart/it’s a shock that suddenly what you thought would keep going up and up is actually now steady or has taken a hit, even, especially once you factor in inflation.
8 Likes
Their suggestions for how to combat this:
- Brokerage accounts! (I didn’t expect that one!)
- practicing stoic/practical pessimism, or allowing yourself to brainstorm, in detail, ways to avoid or cope with the worst case scenario
- Learning to live below your means
- Social challenges, like no-buy months and trying to save a certain amount each week. Kinda like what we do here on OMD. To remind ourselves that discretionary things really are discretionary and we can go without
4 Likes
I haven’t listened to that episode or read the book. But I just read the article and I don’t see anything anti feminist about it. I can see a million ways to co-opt pieces of it to MAKE anti feminist arguments, but I don’t think it’s necessarily anti feminist in itself. Lots that’s anti feminist in society though!
An example: it is a fact that I am the lower earner in my relationship and that it would cost more than we can afford for me to work.
My partner and I have options
We both work, our finances are less stable, but I pursue my career
Hypothetically we could have decided not to have children
I work part time in a hobby job situation where I don’t progress but it’s neutral impact on our finances
I don’t work, it’s the easiest for our finances and family, but I lose my career entirely
If he loses his job we can both pivot to various kinds of work but we don’t have the financial burden of paying for my career.
It’s incredibly typical. Neither of us are sexist. But it does seem like the world we live in is
11 Likes
I think learning to live below your means is a huge one for that. We cannot spend like I earn an income- especially not on fixed expenses
5 Likes
What does this mean?
4 Likes
Good question! I think the implicit insurance policy is that if the family was used to getting by on only one income, and something happened like that earner lost their job, the other partner could get a job to pick up the slack?
3 Likes
I’m gonna be honest not seeing the logic. Second earner means commute and childcare expenses again. And as if earner two having a career in X but getting laid off precludes them from pivoting to career Y?
2 Likes
But also others who are more familiar with this concept should jump in lol because I am half-braining this while working
2 Likes
The part of the article right after what I quoted above:
This last point is really the key to Warren’s specific argument about bankruptcy, though it’s the first two that would drive her larger interest in politics. Bad things have always happened to families from time to time. In a traditional two-parent, one-earner family, there was always the possibility that mom could step up and help out when trouble arose.
“If her husband was laid off, fired, or otherwise left without a paycheck,” Warren and Tyagi write, “the stay-at-home mother didn’t simply stand helplessly on the sidelines as her family toppled off an economic cliff; she looked for a job to make up some of that lost income.” Similarly, if a family member got sick, mom was available as an unpaid caregiver. “A stay-at-home mother served as the family’s ultimate insurance against unemployment or disability — insurance that had a very real economic value even when it wasn’t drawn on.”
A modern family where mom is already working has no “give” and is much more likely to be pushed into bankruptcy by job loss or family illness unless it builds up a big financial cushion.
But most families, of course, didn’t build up big financial cushions. The main financial savings vehicle for the American middle class was the owner-occupied home in the good school district. But the only way to tap that asset is to sell it and move someplace less desirable, disrupting children’s lives and risking a tumble out of the middle class.
Consequently, families in practice try to deal with financial hardship by availing themselves of the wide range of consumer credit opportunities made available by the ongoing deregulation of the financial industry. This combination of brittle household finances, stagnant discretionary incomes, and wide availability of poorly understood debt products fundamentally explains the runup in bankruptcies.
8 Likes
I don’t find it sexist either, as either half of a partnership could choose to not work including in same sex marriages. I agree in general that being honest about the pressures of consumerism and living below your means is essential.
I was forced out of my job due to disability which is obviously not ideal BUT I have to say there are some very real advantages to having a house spouse. I never would have thought that based on the way people talk about things and how pissed I was I couldn’t work, but I have gradually found myself wondering why more people don’t do this. Obviously some people, like the working poor, literally cannot afford to make that choice, but lots and lots of people can and don’t.
My single income experience
I know so many couples where they each make over (sometimes well over- like both making six figures or close to it) the household national average and they are running absolutely ragged, and always wondering how other people manage to make dinner or clean or do all the other admin stuff. They almost all outsource a lot of stuff I don’t outsource, spend far more on convenience, and seem from the outside to be just- intensely stressed and feeling like it’s all on the verge of falling apart at any minute.
Meanwhile, my husband has the typical stressful white collar office job, but he is also able to work out 4-5 days a week. He has therapy once a week. And he has a hobby of writing poetry and submitting, and has been published several times in the last year. Most nights he gets enough sleep. The majority of our weekends are spent relaxing and going out and doing fun things. He has time to do projects like re-paint our apartment. And he never thinks about stuff like what’s for dinner or when to squeeze in self-care. That is 100% possible because I’m a homemaker.
I also have a lot of time. I do housework and stuff but I also go to the gym during the week, meet up with a friend occasionally, and definitely don’t feel overworked or like I’m working full time. In terms of workload our life feels very manageable and relaxed. I know some people will immediately say BUT KIDS, but I’m telling you, I hear this intense “we have no time” stuff from people without kids ALL THE TIME. It’s not just parents. Plenty of childfree people feel like they are barely scraping by and losing themselves just between work and life obligations. DH has commented before that on Mondays he feels so refreshed but many of his co-workers complain that they had to do house work all weekend, or administrative life stuff, and basically got no time for themselves. Not all people with kids, either.
The lifestyle bloat is really real when people get too stressed, I think. And the necessary things about working, like we only have one car and I don’t drive it. I don’t have work clothes or any of the other associated costs of working. I have time to make DH breakfast and lunch, which I did when I was working too, but it’s even easier to do it now. He’s never scrambling in the morning. In fact he starts each day with a 15 minute stretch session and then journals, then he gets ready for his day. I keep his clothes stocked up, buy gifts for our relatives when there’s an event, plan our finances, schedule our appointments, etc. Basically he has to go to work and do the physical stuff for me that I can’t do- but at most that takes him like 4 hours a week. I do everything else, which I’m not bitter or angry about because…it’s my job! I see homemaking as my job and a real job, and since I’m not also balancing it with full time work and a million other things it’s totally doable for me. I enjoy it and I’m good at it!
Now on the flip side we of course have less money than if I worked too. And we live more locally than our two earner peers. We rent. We travel internationally once every several years, not yearly or multiple times a year. I notice they also take lots of small trips to “recharge”, like shorter weekend trips or even domestic flight vacations or staycations in hotels. We don’t really do those, and many years we don’t go anywhere. But I also notice that often when people come back from those trips the first words out of their mouths is that it was “too short” and they are stressed again immediately. They do more stuff like massages and things too, more shopping in general IMO.
I think there is something to be said for people (who have choices, again, not talking about literal poverty survival scenarios here) crafting a life that is emotionally sustainable and just, peaceful- with a good sense of enoughness. And one that doesn’t need to be escaped from because it’s just…not that difficult to handle, and has plenty of enjoyment baked into the daily life. I love my peaceful life. I love that I’m not worn out and that my husband can work and take really good care of himself. It’s certainly not accessible as an option for everyone, but I know so so so many people who could make it work and won’t even consider it.
I always thought a cool arrangement would be to switch off roles, or at least have one person go part-time for 5 years at a time, then switch. I imagine most able people could do what I do with a part time job on top (I used to be able to) so no one would have to drop out of the workforce completely. Or even like, consulting for 5 years, then going back to full time so the other person can take off. IDK. I just feel there are so many ways to arrange a life and the idea that you need like a crazy massive amount of money at the expense of everything else seems really strange to me. I think most people who put that income first wouldn’t say they are people who value money more than anything else, but in a way that’s what’s reflected.
It’s really interesting, because when I lost my career I went through a long mourning period. But eventually it got easier and I felt better physically which helped. And then after a couple of years I really did feel like, man, we might have done this anyway! Life is much easier for both of us.
20 Likes
YEP. I think seeing and hearing the same thing from friends, family, general community is what made me seek out MMM in the first place.
7 Likes
I love the way you’ve phrased this!! I’m thinking about all the ways to arrange my life once baby comes–so important to me to interrogate what is really going to work for my family rather than unthinkingly continuing what we’ve been doing and still feeling like we’re falling behind.
7 Likes
Today’s new IWTYTBR episode just so happens to be about a two-income family that declared bankruptcy…
6 Likes
I guess I know what I’m listening to next…haha
4 Likes
I think so much of this for a lot of people is also about the waves of judgment that arrive if you aren’t STRIVING, specifically professionally. I feel like I’ve gotten wayyyy more judgment on the basis of not working than pretty much any other decision I’ve ever made in my life. Including the decision to be bisexual ( 
) Like if I tell someone I don’t work, the look in their eyes changes immediately. I’ve had people literally just, end the conversation with a condescending smile and nod like “oh that’s nice…” and walk away. It’s bizarre! I’ve not encountered that about anything else!
But homemaker is like, a very very dirty word here. I’m sure in conservative areas it’s different and much more socially acceptable or maybe even pushed on women specifically, but not in cities- for sure. There’s this sense, I think, that ambition is only possible in an academic or professional realm- and maybe in sports. Like, the ambition to live a beautiful peaceful life is not a thing, or the ambition to arrive at a higher spiritual plane, or to invest in community more, or to break generational cycles, or to have a certain family life, or to live in line with nature, etc. “Real ambition” results in higher pay or in academic titles, not in a life well-lived. It’s positively bizarre.
14 Likes
Sometimes you don’t even get this 
9 Likes
THEN YOU WEREN’T AMBITIOUS ENOUGH!
/s
10 Likes
But really I think it’s a failure of feminism that anyone is looking down on you for choosing what is right for your family out of the options you have. That is shitty and I’m sorry you’ve run into that attitude.
5 Likes
Aw, thanks- that’s very nice <3 yeah I think you’re right- it’s like a weird intersection of competitive feminism and ableism.
rambling
I think it also has a lot to do with prejudicial coding, which seems very common but also like, officially approved of? But that’s just a suspicion. I think maybe a “nonworking woman married to a man” especially who visibly looks normal and is younger than retirement age w/ no kids is almost read as “you must be an extreme alt right OR ultra-wealthy OR religious fundamentalist” person or something. IDK if that’s true…it’s just a vibe I get sometimes. Like the discomfort is palpable.
I feel like as political polarization has intensified its become more socially acceptable to make sweeping assumptions based on really minor things, like language use or a one-off comment, etc. It’s really fascinating to observe. Haha, I think if I were younger or hadn’t been through like, actual discrimination and ableism, it would probably bother me a lot more than it does. It’s sort of an interesting litmus test, or that’s how I choose to see it. I figure if someone will write me off on that basis alone they’re probably too close minded to be a good friend-match for me anyway.
I do fully lie to medical professionals tho, and tell them I still work. Treatment really goes downhill if you don’t and they start speaking to you like you’re an idiot. They really seem to like if I say I do “tech writing” instead of just “writing”, so I use that. Especially for female practitioners, they often comment really positively on that (i.e. “woman in STEM” stuff) and are nicer after. LOL. People!
15 Likes